Digital Tradition Mirror

Brisbane Ladies (Queensland Drovers) (Farewell and Adieu)

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Brisbane Ladies (Queensland Drovers) (Farewell and Adieu)
(Saul Mendelsohn)

Farewell and adieu to you, Brisbane ladies
Farewell and adieu, you maids of Toowong
We've sold all our cattle and we have to get a movin'
But we hope we shall see you again before long.

cho: We'll rant and we'll roar like true Queensland drovers
     We'll rant and we'll roar as onward we push
     Until we return to the Augathella station
     Oh, it's flamin' dry goin' through the old Queensland bush.

The first camp we make, we shall call it the Quart Pot,
Calboolture, then Kilcoy, and Collington's Hut,
We'll pull up at the stone house, Bob Williamson's paddock,
And early next morning we cross the Blackbutt.

Then on to Taromeo and Yarraman Creek, lads,
It's there we shall make our next camp for the day
Where the water and grass are both plenty and sweet, lads,
And maybe we'll butcher a fat little stray.

Then on to Nanango, that hard-bitten township
Where the out-of-work station-hands shit in the dust,
Where the shearers get shorn by old Tim, the contractor
Oh, I wouldn't go near there, but I flaming well must!


The girls of Toomancie they look so entrancing
Like bawling young heifers they're out for their fun
With the waltz and the polka and all kinds of dancing
To the rackety old banjo of Bob Anderson.

Then fill up your glasses, and drink to the lasses,
We'll drink this town dry, then farewell to them all
And when we've got back to the Augathella Station,
We hope you'll come by there and pay us a call.



Written by Saul Mendelsohn, printed as a broadside.
     repr. Queensland Boomerang, 1891. In most Australian
     collections; cf. "Spanish Ladies"

Tune: Spanish Ladies (minor version)
also see Farewell and Adieu
sung by Hoyt Axton
RG

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!